Monthly Archives: October 2023

grieving

A Weekend to Sink into Grief

Halloween hits me harder than the other fall/winter holidays. It was my late husband’s favorite holiday and his fervor for celebrating it was contagious. He’d start gearing up for it by July, thinking about costumes and often doing research or ordering specialty components for whatever he had dreamed up.

We normally celebrated by rafting and camping for two days over the pre-Halloween weekend with fellow Halloween fanatics.  

This year marks my third Halloween without him. I noted last year that the second Halloween hit me harder than the first. This year, the entire month of October felt like a slow build up to the final weekend, with my chest getting tighter and tighter as the month progressed.  

I noticed myself feeling more and more on edge as the final weekend loomed. That Friday got off to a rough start as someone I had hired to do some winterizing at my house didn’t show up. I went to work for a few hours but couldn’t stop thinking about how my husband would have done the winterizing himself. It made me miss him intensely and I felt sobs building up inside of me. I wondered how I would make it through the session I had scheduled for the afternoon with my trainer and then evening plans with a friend.

And then I had an epiphany: I didn’t have to make it through a session with my trainer and evening plans with a friend. I could cancel. My trainer and friend were both quite gracious and encouraged me to grieve in whatever way I needed. Emboldened, I decided to clear my weekend and set some intentions.

In the early days of my grief, I often spent an entire weekend sinking into my grief, but for the last year at least, while I’ve felt a lot of grief, it’s mostly been a layer on top of whatever I’m doing. I have given myself a few hours here and there to settle into it and be sad, but it’s been quite a while since I gave myself an entire day to be sad, so a whole weekend to nurse my grief felt luxurious.

I went through photos and videos of our life together, listened to voice messages he left me, and wandered around the garage, touching his workbench and the tools I’ve kept. I still don’t know the names of most of them, but that doesn’t matter.

Luckily, he had a well-documented life. I have photos and videos of him doing so many of the things he loved to do—riding motorcycles, rafting, playing with dogs, remodeling, playing cards and dominoes with his brother and sister-in-law, road tripping, camping, gardening.

He had a knack for turning everything into a competition, and I have the video proof of that. I am not competitive, so he got used to competing with himself. I had forgotten about when we were in the airport in Frankfurt, Germany and he invented a contest with himself, trying to get his wheelie suitcase to do more and more elaborate maneuvers. I watched the videos over and over again, savoring his voice, his hands on the suitcase handle, his cocky explanations about the twists and spins.

I went to the bench commemorated to him on Sunday morning. It was covered in snow and the plaque with his name on it shined. I sat and cried for as long as I could stand the cold.

I wore his fisherman hat and flannel shirt. I put my wedding band on, relishing how beautiful it looked on my hand and how right the weight of it felt on my finger.

A couple friends texted me, offering to distract me and make me laugh. I explained that I didn’t want distraction. I was laughing plenty. Crying, too, but there is often quite a lot to laugh about when I’m grieving. I still don’t know if I lost my breath while watching the suitcase spinning videos from laughter or crying.

I closed out the weekend by attending the one event I had not canceled: a family dinner with his mom and son, my daughter, and a cousin. We reminisced about some of his antics and his terrifying driving.

It was a good weekend, and while I was sad on Monday, my breathing felt much less tight. Tomorrow is November 1, and I look forward to drawing in a deep breath without effort.

grieving

Be Brave Enough to Ask for Help

I’m getting better at asking for what I need, but my default setting for many years was to refuse help. I spent many decades perfecting the art of rejecting help.

For example, there’s the infamous time I refused to let my sister-in-law open a door for me. I haven’t just been bad at accepting help, I’ve been downright obnoxious about it. I told myself I was being independent and strong, but now I think that was bullshit. I thought that asking for help—or even receiving help I hadn’t asked for—was a sign of weakness, but now I realize that what I was doing when I refused help was hiding my vulnerability.

The idea that asking for help is a weakness is actually backwards. Not asking for help, for me, is the weaker option: it allows me to keep my vulnerability hidden. Once I made that mind trick visible to myself, it became easier to ask for help. Now I can challenge myself to be brave enough to ask for help.

I’ve recently had a few friends beautifully demonstrate how to ask for help. One friend is receiving chemo treatments for cancer and losing her hair. She posted her Amazon wish list of wigs to Facebook, making it incredibly easy for anyone who wanted to help to order her exactly the wigs she wanted. Another friend had a significant birthday coming up and wanted to get lots of old-fashioned birthday cards, so she posted messages to a few different online groups she’s part of, making her wish for birthday cards explicit.

Guess what? The one friend got exactly the wigs she hoped for and the other got a mother lode of birthday cards. And those of us who sent wigs and cards got to feel like we were awesome friends who knew just exactly what to send. As I’ve said before, letting others help is actually giving them something.

Asking for what you want or need is tricky—that’s why it takes courage. You might ask for help and be told no. I still vividly remember a time in the past when I asked a loved one to help me with something and they told me they were offended that I would ask. Although I now think that they were the one who was out of line—they could have simply said, “I’m sorry I can’t help” instead of shaming me—I do still hear a voice in my head sometimes when I ask for help, saying, “Oh, you’re doing it again, Elizabeth—this could go badly.”

But if I were to tally up the times my requests for help were greeted happily against the times they weren’t, I know which team would win: Team Ask-for-Help by a landslide.

I see a lot of anger among grieving people that others don’t know what they need—there is anger because people invite them out too often or not enough, call too often or not enough, talk about their dead loved one too much or not enough. The common refrain is, “They should know that I want [more/fewer] [invitations/calls/stories].”  The idea that good friends should just know what we need when we are grieving is seductive and fed by the serendipity of someone every once in a while getting it just right.

For example, a few days ago a friend messaged me and another friend to share Halloween memories of my husband. Halloween was his favorite holiday and they had both spent many Halloweens with him. We had fun reminding each other of some of his more outrageous costumes (like a four-foot extension he made for himself that made it look like he was ten feet tall and had four arms, two of which clenched beers in their hands). I didn’t even realize until we started messaging the stories to each other how badly I wanted to share those stories.

But the fact that someone can occasionally know what I need doesn’t mean that everyone should know what I need on a regular basis. As I’ve said before, much of the time, I don’t even know what I need. So it’s important for me to remember that nobody is a mind reader.

It’s absolutely lovely when someone guesses correctly, but that’s all they’re doing: guessing. Every grieving person is a little different, so what one grieving person wants may be quite different from what another wants. I often hear about things that other widows found comforting when their partner died and I think, “I am so glad nobody did that when Tom died!”

Accepting that no one is a mind reader has been helpful for me way beyond getting support in my grieving. My relationships with colleagues, friends, and family members have improved as I’ve stopped assuming that what I want is evident and that if I’m not getting it it’s because they’ve made a decision not to give me what I want.

But it takes a little courage to realize I didn’t make my needs known rather than everyone around me is a jerk.

academic life/work, anxiety, Buddhist life, failure, mental illness

Befriending Overwhelm

I spend a good part of my time at the intersection of Depression, Anxiety, and Grief. When overwhelm hits, which it often does, and a wave of panic rises up in my chest, I take a deep breath.

I find my Buddhist practice very helpful when I feel that panic. Panic makes me feel like I should be hurrying—doing something, anything, and fast! But Buddhists aren’t known for hurrying. When my impulse is to move fast, I consciously slow down. With each deep breath, my panic subsides a bit until it is manageable. Sometimes I have to go through the process of taking a deep breath and letting my panic subside multiple times in a day or even an hour. It’s ok, I tell myself, take your time.

I was at a conference last week that put me into overwhelm. I was surrounded by brilliant, energetic, competent people and I felt dull, slow, and outdated in their company. Each session I attended left me feeling more overwhelmed by the feeling that I could never perform my job the way they perform theirs.

For me, overwhelm is often quite sneaky and I don’t always recognize it for what it is. I often notice that I feel a heaviness I can’t quite identify for hours or even days before I realize, “Oh, I’m feeling overwhelmed!” Once I label the feeling, I say hello to it. Really—I say out loud, “Hello, Overwhelm, my old friend.” That may seem ridiculous, but greeting it as a friend helps me not react to it with fear.

Then I sit down with it as I would with a friend having a tough time. If possible, I do this over coffee or tea, just as I would with a friend. “What’s going on?” I ask it. Here’s how my conversation with Overwhelm went last week at the conference:

Me: What’s going on?

Overwhelm: Everyone here is doing such amazing things! I’m so far behind—how can I do cool things with antiracism and undergraduate research and STEM support and all the other things I need to do?????? And I’m behind on publishing and . . . It’s a hopeless situation.

Me, speaking to Overwhelm as I would to any friend: Hmmm. I wonder if being at an academic conference is kind of like scrolling through Facebook. Presenters are showing their best work, just as most people on Facebook are showing their best moments. Just as the happy family photos don’t tell the whole story of a person’s daily life, a brilliant conference presentation doesn’t tell the whole story of an academic’s work.

Overwhelm: Huh . . .

By that point, Overwhelm started to lose its energy.

Of course, that wasn’t the end of it. The next day I went to a session where I heard about an amazing and elaborate program that I would love to replicate. Afterwards, I was overwhelmed with thoughts that quickly led me to a downward spiral: I will never be able to replicate the program, but I should try, but I can’t ever do it like she did, I will fail, I suck . . . and I’m behind on email and . . .  So I took a deep breath. And another one. I’ve learned I must regulate my breathing before I can regulate my thoughts. Another deep breath.

“Hello again, Overwhelm,” I said in between deep breaths.

Once I was breathing in a non-panicked way, my thoughts were already a little more manageable. I wrote them all down in a list. All the thoughts went on the list: I’m behind on email, I have a report due in November, if I don’t stain the back fence before it gets cold it will rot away this winter, I will never be able to replicate the program I heard about, I suck . . .  Giving each thought its own line on the list gives it some space. It can exist. It is an ok thought. When all the thoughts were on the list, I gave one breath to each thought, taking the length of one complete breath, an inhale and an exhale, to acknowledge the thought and linger on it. Sometimes that lead to more thoughts, which went on the list.

Sometimes all the thoughts want is a little space to be acknowledged and then I can let them go. The thought that whatever I come up with will never be as great as what this other woman came up with was one I could easily let go of once I gave it a breath. No, what I do won’t be as great as what she did. I’m not in competition with this other person, who is at a different institution in a different state. OK. Good bye, thought.

Other thoughts are useful and become items on my to do list or bucket list. The report due in November and staining the back fence went on my to do list.

Thoughts like “I suck” just want space. I give that thought a breath and then cross it off my list. I know it’s not true in any meaningful way. I used to have to fact check those thoughts—do I suck? I’d ask. And then I’d write down the evidence for and against that verdict. There was always more evidence against the verdict. Now I don’t have to do the actual fact-checking, I just have to remind myself that I’ve held this trial many times before and always the verdict has been, no, you don’t really suck.

Buddhism tells me that any time I want to hang on to a thought, hold it in a tight grip, I should instead open my hand and give it space, let it float away if it wants to. It usually wants to float away. Thoughts that float away sometimes come back, but if I again loosen my grip on them, they float away again. Sometimes they float back and I let them float away several times a day for years and years. It’s ok. I can keep letting them float away. Once I learned how to let them float away, I began to trust that they will float away if/when they return.

Letting the thoughts float away doesn’t “cure” me of my grief, depression, or anxiety. All it does is make the overwhelm go away. And I’ll take that.

life skills

Any Day Could Be My Last + Life Is Short = A Few Practices for Savoring Life

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The death of a partner that you thought you’d spend the rest of your life with really puts a point on how short life is and how suddenly and unexpectedly it can all be over. My husband was only 61 when he died. There was a time when I thought 61 was ancient, but now that I’m in my 50s, 61 sounds quite young.

My stroke when I was 27 jolted me with the realization that any day could be my last. I’m realizing now that although there is some overlap, life is short is not the same as any day could be my last.

Any day could be my last drives me to notice and appreciate the sacredness in each day. It urges me toward gratitude. It makes me wake with the thought, “I get another day!”

Life is short motivates me to enjoy and savor the experiences I get to have and to stop looking at life as a to do list. It makes me want to slow things down.

These two thoughts together have made me become much more intentional about how I use my time. I’m very aware of what Oliver Burkeman calls “the finitude of life”—the concrete, no-way-out endpoint that awaits every single one of us. We’ll all die with something left on our to do list. Since my husband died, my goals are less about getting a lot done and more about being intentional about what I do and savoring those things.

Here are some of the practices that have helped me with this:

Planning a big adventure and a little adventures every week.

This is one of the practices Laura Vanderkam talks about in her book Tranquility by Tuesday. Vanderkam is a work-life balance expert. Last year, I took an online course she designed around the nine guidelines (she calls the “rules,” but I shudder at that word) she says will enable you to achieve “tranquility by Tuesday.” My favorite guideline is to plan a big adventure and a little adventure every week.

The idea is to do something beyond your normal routine every week. A big adventure is something that takes 3+ hours and a little adventure can be done in a week or two. Vanderkam says—and I have experienced this—that having these adventures every week will have the effect of slowing time down because there will be something different and memorable happening every week.

I have embraced this guideline with gusto. Some recent big adventures include spending half a day wandering around a neighborhood in Denver I wasn’t very familiar with, paddleboarding for the first time, and going to a dinner party where I knew no one but the host. Little adventures have included trying a new restaurant, making a new recipe, and calling a friend I haven’t spoken to in a while.

What I count as an adventure is flexible and evolves. For example, when I first began taking dance lessons, I considered each dance lesson a little adventure, but over time, as dancing became more comfortable to me, I stopped counting each lesson as an adventure. At this point, I’ve only danced with my instructor, so the first time I dance with another partner, that will likely count as a little adventure for me.

Being a minimalist.

One of my favorite minimalist writers, Joshua Becker, says that there is no one right way to do minimalism and what one person considers minimal, another could consider to be excessive or too Spartan.

For me, curating the material items I keep in my life gives me a daily sense of calm. I enjoy uncluttered counters and shelves and a space that feels like it has some breathing room. Of course I have stuff, and some would say I have too many books, too much cookware, and too many shoes. It’s easier for me to savor what I do have when nearly everything I own gets regular use.

Practicing minimalism makes it easy for me to give things away that I no longer need or love. I get more joy out of giving something away than I do from keeping it in a closet.

Minimalism also impacts the things I do. There are so many more things that I want to do than there is time for me to do them, so I have to accept that I can’t do all the things.

Related to minimalism is Swedish Death Cleaning, the practice of getting rid of things while you’re alive instead of leaving it to your survivors to purge your stuff (and feel a ton of guilt or anxiety about it).

Maintaining a gratitude practice.

I’ve had some form of gratitude practice since my stroke, but since my husband died, I’ve formalized it by keeping a gratitude journal. The practice is simple: every night, while the water for my tea heats, I jot down three things I’m grateful for that day. Last night I was grateful for how good the lavender in my yard smells, the pinkness of my dog’s belly, and that a toe that has been hurting hurt less.

Thinking of my books-to-be-read as a river to dip into rather than a to do list.

This is an idea I got from Oliver Burkeman. Making the shift in my mind was simple and I immediately felt lighter. When I thought of my book pile as a to do list, I always felt a bit of panic. “Holy shit,” I would think. “What if I die tomorrow and I haven’t yet read all this?!” And then I would feel tremendous pressure to sit down and start reading RIGHT NOW in case I died tomorrow. There was no savoring.

But once I started thinking of that pile as a river to dip into, I released myself of the expectation that I would ever read it all. I won’t. And that’s ok. Now I can happily savor what I do read. And if I die tomorrow, leaving the vast majority of the pile unread? It’s ok.

grieving

Grief Shows Up Unexpectedly on a Trip

Grief never stops surprising me. I’m over two years out from my husband’s death, and grief still finds ways to make me feel like I’m in uncharted territory.

I know that traveling can be a trigger for my grief.  I’m used to feeling sad when I go to a new place I never went to with him—thinking how sad it is that he never got to visit the place. That’s how I felt when I took my trip to Iceland, Spain, and Portugal last summer. Several times a day, I found myself thinking wistfully about how he would appreciate the view of the Tagus River from the hotel roof in Lisbon, or how he would have enjoyed the noise and bustle of the pedestrian street in Madrid. I take photos for him, even though I know he’ll never see them. The muscle memory just seems to take over and before I realize what I’m doing, I’ve taken the photo and my mind has started conjuring the narrative I imagine I’ll share with him about the picture.

I also know that going to a place we went to together stirs up memories for me. I find myself in Portland, Oregon, reminiscing about the time we accidentally bought too many train tickets and Tom gave our extra to a stranger. In Seattle, I cried over memories of returning to the hotel after being at a conference all day and finding Tom sporting a new scarf and coat, saying the city made him realize he had to upgrade his style. In Vancouver, I was overcome by simultaneous laughter and tears, recalling Tom’s mock outrage when I ate a pastry from one bakery while standing outside another bakery, looking longingly at the pastries in the window.

This week’s surprise was that going to a city I’ve been to before but never with him can be a trigger. I had a conference in Atlanta, which I went to three times while Tom and I were together, but never with him. After I checked into my hotel and had a few quiet minutes to myself, I was surprised to feel the familiar pressure of grief in my chest. I was mystified, and then my brain said, “The last time you were here, Tom was alive.”

I couldn’t tell you what year it was, what conference I went to, what hotel I stayed at, what restaurants I ate at—but I know for sure that Tom was alive, that I spoke to him on the phone every night, that he made me feel his presence from 1400 miles away simply through the power of his voice and our connection. I know that I missed him the whole time I was gone, not in a way that made it hard for me to be away but in a way that made it easy for me to go home, and that when I got home, I felt that soul-deep exhalation that comes from being held by the person who makes you feel the safest you’ve ever felt in your life.

Then I went to a restaurant I had never been to that seemed oddly familiar, and I remembered: the last time I was in Atlanta, I walked past the restaurant and thought it looked interesting but didn’t go in. When I got home, I told Tom that I hadn’t eaten in the most interesting restaurant I saw on my trip. Of course, he teased me. I hadn’t thought of that conversation once while I was planning my trip. It wasn’t until I was inside the restaurant I had never been to that I recovered the memory.

It makes sense that grief would show up in Atlanta. Now when I travel, there’s no one to call with an evening check in. Nobody greets me when I get home. Nobody misses my cooking while I’m gone. Remembering that he wasn’t with me the last time I came to Atlanta is just another way to miss him, to miss missing someone and to miss being missed.

The truth is, I could call my daughter or sister or a good friend for an evening check in, and my dogs will greet me with much gusto when I get home. It’s not really about whether I have someone to do an evening check in call with or someone to be glad I’m home—it’s about not having Tom.

It’s always about not having Tom. I know I may again have a partner who I talk to every night when I’m away and who greets me with a great hug upon my return, who makes me feels safe and loved. I hope I do. I know I will probably love that person like crazy. And Tom will still be gone and that will still hurt.